"My concern now is the fact that the EAST is buying up nickel mines and taking them private in order to meet their demands and eventually we will have no world demand as they will be self sufficient."

You've hit on my biggest concern too, traps. China in particular, with its hordes of US cash in hand, is running around the world scooping up primary metal producers on the cheap. This will lock up a lot of base metal production for themselves once the world's economy begins its recovery and China's factories start churning out product at full speed again.

This is an eventual consequence of the huge US trade deficit with China. US borrows tons of money, China gets the cash, China buys everything it can get its hands on. Great investment strategy for China, poor outlook for the availability of base metals in a few years for North America and Europe. A lot of excess capacity has been shut down in recent months and will take years to come back online.